Begging groups cash in on legal limbo

iSun special report: Laws vary on sidewalk solicitors — some of questionable backing

May 6, 2012

A solicitor from Covina's Missionary Church of the Disciples of Jesus Christ solicits donations from customers outside Cardenas supermarket in Cathedral City on April 16. / Michael Snyder, The Desert Sun

Written by

Rebecca Walsh

The Desert Sun

Cynthia Willis (right) of The Church of the Living God in San Bernardino receives a 25-cent donation from Willy Johnson of Palm Springs in front of Walmart in Palm Springs on April 20. / Wade Byars, The Desert Sun

iSun reports

For more iSun investigative reports - and to learn more about the team and what they do - visit www.mydesert.com/isun.

The management of Stater Bros. in Desert Hot Springs said solicitors have been asked to leave the area in front of the store, sometimes on a daily basis. / Jay Calderon, The Desert Sun

A sign at a valley Stater Bros. supermarket addresses solicitation on the premises without specifically discouraging it. / Rebecca Walsh, The Desert Sun

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CATHEDRAL CITY — The asphalt is glistening. Shoppers are cranky. But Vladimir Cardona stands patiently outside the Cardenas supermarket in a heavy white polyester suit, holding a paper-covered coffee can in his hands.

He doesn't say much, just smiles when a dollar drops through the slit in the lid.

“I do this for the love of others,” says 32-year-old Cardona.

Day after day, Cardona and a couple of his “brothers” from the Missionary Church of the Disciples of Jesus Christ in Covina leave home and make the drive to the Coachella Valley to take up posts outside desert grocery stores — and beg.

It's a human poverty parade that doesn't march in other states — a result of California's strong free-speech protections and a 33-year-old landmark state Supreme Court case. All local governments and retailers can do is try to limit the practice, with varying degrees of success.

Shoppers are left trying to discern which fundraisers are legitimate and which nonprofits are real. Despite loud sales pitches and laminated cards that claim the money will save everyone from starving children to homeless vets, in reality, most solicitors seem to be pleading for donations that will put a roof over their own head or food in their bellies.

A Desert Sun review of the groups begging in the desert found that half are not registered as nonprofits in either state or national charity databases. Two are local; two are not. And without federal or state tax laws that require strict accounting of every dollar raised and spent, it's impossible to know where hundreds of dollars in donations collected every day end up going.

CVAG Community Resources Director Aurora Wilson says Coachella Valley donors are better off giving to established organizations who follow all the rules.

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“It just seems very suspect to me,” she says. “I have no idea how legitimate these other efforts are, well-meaning as they may be. You have to work within the confines of the law.”

Evolution of the law

California's solicitation subculture has evolved over three decades.

Store owners trace the problem to a 1979 dispute between the Pruneyard Shopping Center in Campbell and a group of high school students who wanted to gather signatures against a U.N. resolution. In that case, the state's top judges concluded residents can exercise their free speech rights in communal parts of private shopping centers, turning them into de facto “public squares.”

The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the ruling a year later, deciding states can provide citizens with broader free speech rights than those in the federal Constitution.

But California's definition of free speech goes beyond political protest or signature-gathering for propositions. Mom-and-pop nonprofit groups and churches have expanded the public square concept in Pruneyard to include their solicitations for funding from their neighbors.

It's left to individual cities and retailers to rein the practice in.

Two years ago, Palm Springs city leaders adopted an ordinance banning soliciting in front of private commercial buildings. Still, it seems more often than not, there's a fundraiser with a folding table outside Walmart on Ramon Road; the store keeps a calendar for sign-ups. It's just easier that way.

“We don't want people on top of each other,” says store manager Jim Florek.

In Palm Desert, city staff complete a background check of every person applying for a nonprofit soliciting license. As a result, panhandlers are rare.

Senior Code Compliance Officer Pedro Rodriguez says his department has problems with store beggars five or six times a year. “It hasn't been a problem in the past year and a half,” he says.

That's not the case a little further east, in La Quinta. Community Safety Manager Deby Conrad is trying to cobble together a city law that combines the best features of the Palm Desert and Palm Springs ordinances in an attempt to get control of a solicitation free-for-all in her city.

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“We've really lost a handle on it,” Conrad says.

Meantime, the awkward exchanges go on every day in the desert.

Like peanut vendors at a baseball game, they shout: “Help a homeless vet?” or “Save a child? Just a quarter.” As shoppers duck their heads and hurry by, the solicitors finish with a more subdued “God bless.”

The whole dance starts up again with shoppers on the way out.

Cynthia Willis, a 52-year-old former nurse on long-term disability, begs in the desert a few days every week. Her three children are grown. She says she has nothing better to do. Besides, the cause convinced her: Homeless Veterans Association of America, a group she says was formed by a disabled veteran living in Desert Hot Springs. HVAA, Willis says, is raising money to buy or rent two homes — one for male homeless veterans and another for women and children.

Attempts by The Desert Sun to reach the founder of the group were unsuccessful. Volunteer Michael Jones told a reporter to call back at the group's number after 5 p.m. Those calls were never returned.

Fortified with McDonald's sodas and an umbrella for shade, Willis has raised $100 so far in front of the Palm Springs Walmart this day. Still perky, she's been at her post seven hours, since 8:30 a.m. Just $60 more to go to reach her day's goal before the van picks her up at 7 p.m. to return her home to Rancho Cucamonga.

“Thank you baby,” she calls to a woman who drops a few dollars in her metal box. “It's very hard. But I've been blessed. I just ask a quarter; I don't hound you.”

“That's OK. People get tired. You don't want to give, you don't have to.”

Four main groups seem to be soliciting in the valley: Los-Angeles-based Stay Free Ministries, the missionary church from Covina, HVAA and Indio's Living Word Church. All send residents, or future residents, of their group homes to area stores to beg for donations or, in the case of Living Word, to sell “World's Finest” chocolate bars.

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Paying their way

On the day Willis was soliciting, she was one in a crew of 10: six volunteers and four homeless panhandlers asking for donations throughout the valley.

Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays, Stay Free Ministries sends the women living in its Rialto sober-living group home into the desert to beg for cash to pay their monthly $400 “resident fees.” Most have lost their children to foster care as a result of drug addiction or related crime, according to volunteer manager James Mitchell. During the week, the women attend drug court, family planning classes and counseling.

“We have had some very good success stories,” he says.

Stay Free Ministries Director Harold Douglas did not respond to repeated requests to speak to the women or visit the group home in San Bernardino County. And in a second phone call, Mitchell said he couldn't talk anymore.

The Missionary Church of the Disciples of Jesus Christ also raises money to cover the room and board of its volunteer solicitors and seminarians. Cardona produced a brochure by way of explanation:

“Would you like to become a pastor or missionary? Here is your opportunity. You will have FREE housing and food while you are studying.”

“We collect this money to keep the doors open,” says Cardona.

It's the same story with Victory Life Training Center, Living Word's sober-living group home for men in Sky Valley.

“I was delivered from methamphetamines. They opened up my life to me,” says Victor Guzman, a one-time resident and now the manager of the home. This day, he's standing outside Cardenas with another man, pitching $2 chocolate bars.

“This opens the door to evangelize people,” he says, lapsing into scripture. “The word of God is changing us. Praise the Lord.”

For all their faith and zeal, the solicitors can be intimidating. Some Coachella Valley shoppers have had enough.

“Each week, the punchline changes,” says Michael Ketels, a La Quinta resident. Ketels confronted one of Stay Free Ministries' solicitors. “I believe it is dishonest to solicit for charitable donations for ‘starving babies' when it appears the money for this charity is going to a drug rehabilitation house.”

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Retailers are equally frustrated — and somewhat powerless to do anything about the human begging chain outside their doors.

Some stores seem to have given in. Stater Bros. on Date Palm posts a sign outside: “Solicitors/petitioners are not here at the invitation of Stater Bros. Markets. Stater Bros. is not connected with nor does it endorse or sponsor the solicitors/petitioners in any way.”

Fighting back

Retailers in free-standing buildings or self-contained shopping centers have had better luck. Target and Costco have challenged the idea that their parking lots or the sidewalks at the entrance to a store are essentially town squares. “We ask all solicitors and petitioners to respect our policy by ceasing their activities and leaving our property,” a statement posted on Target's website says. That policy extends even to Salvation Army holiday bell-ringers.

Both companies have successfully banned demonstrations and solicitation outside their stores. A few weeks ago, a Desert Sun editor witnessed a woman solicitor being taken, kicking and screaming, from the La Quinta Target's entrance by police.

“Target takes it very seriously,” says Conrad, the city's community safety manager.

For all the stores' efforts to control year-round begging on their doorsteps, individual shoppers struggle to know who to give to and who to walk quickly past.

Despite city and store requirements that solicitors represent only registered nonprofits, many groups apparently claim to be official charities recognized by the state and federal government but have not received IRS 501(c)(3) tax exemption status. Approval can take up to six months. Only about half of all groups that apply are approved.

Of the groups soliciting in the desert, only Missionary Church of the Disciples of Jesus Christ and Stay Free Ministries appear to be registered as nonprofits. Homeless Veterans, which claims to be a government-recognized charity on the cards it hands out, does not appear in searches of the State Attorney General's website or Guidestar, a national charities database. Living Word in the Desert's Victory Life Training Center also could not be found.

“It's a work in progress,” says Jones. “We're just trying to get started, reaching out. We're learning.”

Just because the groups don't show up in public databases does not mean they haven't been granted tax-exempt status, says Jan Masaoka, executive director of the California Association of Nonprofits. Churches are not required to register as nonprofits with the California Attorney General's Office. And state and federal databases are “notoriously incomplete,” Masaoka adds. However, without a tax ID number, it's impossible to be sure.

California law and the Attorney General's 57-year-old rules for supervising charities explicitly require a series of disclosures from nonprofits. Groups that do not have tax-exempt status or that are waiting for IRS approval have to disclose that to donors. If they do not have nonprofit status, they also have to reveal that to donors.

Groups that claim to have nonprofit status but don't are breaking the law, said California Attorney General's Office spokeswoman Lynda Gledhill.

Individual fundraisers are considered “trustees” for the charity and are required to register with the state. Virtually every panhandler interviewed by The Desert Sun said they were a “volunteer.”

The Riverside County District Attorney's Office waits for local complaints to be investigated before engaging on such issues, said John Hall, the DA's spokesperson.

The DA “is always concerned any time there are issues regarding nonprofit organizations,” Hall wrote in an email. “Any suspected crime involving a nonprofit organization would first need to be investigated by the appropriate local law enforcement agency.”

Masaoka says Coachella Valley residents should put professional panhandlers in the same category they would an unsolicited phone call at home or a letter out of the blue asking for a donation. If you wouldn't give the phone solicitor a credit card number, why would you give the store beggar a dollar?

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And national veterans groups say buyer beware.

“We do not solicit donations in that way at all,” says Randy Brown, communications director for the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans in Washington. “I would advise that the public always be wary of people soliciting donations outside stores or in any way that seems suspicious.

“The best way to make a donation to a cause you care about is to contact the organization directly.”

The bottom line, Masaoka says, is that if desert dwellers don't want to be accosted outside the grocery store, they should not give to the person accosting them.

“You should never give to those people, whether they're legitimate or not legitimate,” Masaoka says. “You're giving them an incentive to continue to do it. If nobody gave money in front of the grocery store, they would stop doing it.

“Legitimate groups will find other ways to raise money.”

Rebecca Walsh can be reached at (760) 778-4661 or rebecca.walsh@thedesertsun.com.
Follow @TDSRebecca